Daddy Takes Us to the Garden eBook

“Oh, Hal! That isn’t the way to do
it!” cried Daddy Blake, when he had watched
his little boy walking along the cabbage row for a
while, dropping the plants, the roots of which were
afterward to be covered with the brown earth.

“Why not?” Hal asked.

“Because you must only drop one plant in
a place. You are letting two and three fall at
once. You mustn’t make a bouquet of them,”
and his father laughed. “Only one cabbage
plant in a spot.”

“Am I doing it right?” asked Mab, who
was on the other side of the cabbage plot.

“Well, not exactly. Hal dropped his too
close together and yours are too far apart. The
cabbage plants ought to be about two and a half feet
apart, in rows and the rows should be separate one
from the other by about twenty inches. Here,
I’ll cut you each a little stick for a measure.
You don’t need to worry about the rows, as Uncle
Pennywait marked them just the right distance apart
as he made them.”

So after that Hal and Mab measured, with sticks Daddy
Blake gave them to get one cabbage plant just as far
from the one next to it in the row as Daddy Blake
wanted. Then, with a hoe, the children’s
father covered the roots with dirt and the cabbages
were planted, or “set out,” as the gardener
calls it.

“Now let me take a look at your corn and beans,”
said Mr. Blake to the two children, when the cabbages
had been left to grow. “I want to see who
has the best chance of winning that ten dollar gold
prize.”

“Hal’s corn is very nice,” said
Mab.

“And so are her beans,” added Mab’s
brother kindly. “I guess maybe she’ll
get the prize.”

“Well, it will be quite a little while before
we can tell,” spoke Daddy Blake. “Corn
and beans will not be gathered until Fall, though we
may eat some of Hal’s corn earlier, for he has
some rows of the sweet variety which can be boiled
and gnawed off the ears.”

Daddy Blake found a few places in Mab’s bean
patch where the useless weeds needed hoeing away,
so they would not steal from the brown earth the food
which the good plants needed.

“And one or two of your corn hills could be
made a little higher, Hal,” said his father.
“If you look at the corn stalks you will see,
down near where they are in the ground, some little
extra roots coming out above the earth. In order
that these roots may reach the soil, and take hold,
the dirt must be hoed up to them.”

Mr. Blake showed the children what he meant, and Mab
cried:

“Those roots are just like the ropes we had
on our tent when we went camping.”

“That’s it,” said Daddy Blake.
“These roots keep the tall corn stalks from
blowing over just as the ropes keep the tent from falling
down.”

“Oh, look!” cried Mab, as she passed one
stalk of corn that was larger than any of the others.
“There’s something growing on this that’s
just like my doll’s hair. I’m going
to pull it off.”